Richard Leakey is Professor of
Anthropology, Stony Brook University and Former Director of the Kenya National
Museums and the Kenya Wildlife Service. Leakey’s field work at Lake Natron on
the Kenya-Tanzania Border, the Lower Omo Valley in Ethiopia, and on the East
shore of Lake Turkana produced a treasure trove of hominid fossils that provides
much of the record on which our understanding of human evolution is built.
Although no longer active in fieldwork, Leakey, as one of the foremost
authorities on wildlife and nature conservation, continues to educate others
about the dangers of environmental degradation.

Leslie Aiello was recently appointed
president of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, based in
New York City. The new post caps off her 30-year career at the University
College London where she was head of the anthropology department and most
recently, head of the graduate school. A biological anthropologist, Aiello’s
research examines the evolution of human adaptation, with a particular emphasis
on the relationship between diet, climate, brain size, and cognitive and social
evolution.

Robert Blumenschine is Professor of
Anthropology and Director of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies at
Rutgers University. His research focuses on the construction of behavioral and
ecological taphonomic models and their application to the vertebrate fossil
record associated with the emergence the genus Homo. His work has
emphasized ecological variables that influence carcass consumption and
associated bone modification by vertebrate carnivores in free-ranging settings,
and on experimental approaches to understanding bone assemblages that have been
modified by multiple biotic and abiotic taphonomic agencies.

Christopher Dean is Professor of
Anatomy at University College London, in the Department of Anatomy and
Developmental Biology. His research interests include the comparative anatomy of
primate dental hard tissues in the context of human life history evolution.
Christopher Dean has published extensively on topics related to his research and
co-authored two textbooks, Introduction to Evolutionary Anatomy, with
Leslie Aiello (1990), and Core Anatomy for Students with John Pegington
(1995).

Craig Feibel is Associate
Professor of Geological Sciences at Rutgers University. His research centers on
the investigation of the geological context for evolution in terrestrial
ecosystems, particularly those related to hominin evolution and the later
Neogene, using sedimentary archives to reconstruct ancient landscapes and
changing environments. His work has included field studies at the Turkana Basin
in East Africa–to establish a geologic framework to the evolutionary record for
which that region is so famous–and along the Levantine Corridor in Israel, and
in Java.

John Fleagle is Distinguished
Professor of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University School of Medicine.
His research involves many aspects of evolutionary biology of higher primates,
including laboratory studies of the comparative and functional anatomy of extant
primates; field studies of the behavior and ecology of primates in Asia, South
America, and Madagascar; and paleontological field research in Africa and South
America. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976.

Patrick Nduru Gathogo is a Kenyan
geologist based at the University of Utah (Salt Lake City). His geological
studies in the Turkana region have focused on the sites of Australopithecus
anamensis at the Kanapoi area of southeastern Turkana. He spends several
months in the region every year working with Drs. F. H. Brown, M. G. Leakey, and
L. N. Leakey. Recently, his work has centered on Pliocene and Pleistocene
deposits of the Koobi Fora Formation in East Turkana where a team led by Drs. M.
G. and L. N. Leakey has recently recovered many fossils of genus Homo.

Frederick Grine is Professor and
Chair of the Anthropology Department at Stony Brook University. His research
focuses on the reconstruction of early hominid dietary habits from the analysis
of dental microwear, and the phylogenetic relationships among species of Australopithecus, Paranthropus, and Homo as deduced
from fossil skulls and teeth. Of particular interest has been the evolutionary
history of the so-called “robust” australopithecines–members of the genus Paranthropus that flourished in Africa between about 2.5 and 1.2
million years ago.

William Jungers is Professor of
Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University. His interests include functional
anatomy and biomechanics, morphometrics, the evolution of Malagasy primates, and
early hominid locomotion. His research is concerned with functional, mechanical
and ontogenetic aspects of musculoskeletal design in living and fossil primates,
ranging from subfossil lemurs to early hominids.He is the editor of Size and
Scaling in Primate Evolution and coeditor of Reconstructing Behavior in the
Primate Fossil Record.

William H. Kimbel is Professor in
the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University and
Science Director of the Institute of Human Origins. He conducts field,
laboratory, and theoretical research in paleoanthropology, with a primary focus
on Plio-Pleistocene hominid evolution in Africa. He has undertaken field and
laboratory research in Ethiopia (Hadar) and Tanzania (Olduvai Gorge), as well as
in Kenya, South Africa, and Tunisia. He is specifically interested in the
application of evolutionary and systematic theory to paleoanthropological
problems.

Meave Leakey is Research Professor
at Stony Brook University; Explorer-in-Residence, National Geographic Society;
co-director, Koobi Fora Research Project; and Research Associate, National
Museums of Kenya. She has worked annually in the Turkana Basin since 1969.
Current field research is focused on the time of emergence of Homo erectus.
Meave Leakey impressed the world with her 1999 discovery of a 3.5
million-year-old skull and partial jaw believed to belong to new branch of early
hominids. Dr. Leakey named the new genus Kenyanthropus platyops.

Daniel E. Lieberman is Professor
of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University. His research examines the
evolution of the human body using both experimental and comparative approaches.
His major research foci are the evolution of human running and walking
capabilities, the origins of human cranial form, and the ways in which the
musculoskeletal system grows and functions. He also conducts experimental
research on adaptations for endurance running in humans and analyses of
phylogenetic systematics.

Fredrick Kyalo Manthi is a Senior
Research Scientist in the Department of Palaeontology at the National Museums of
Kenya and a Post-doctoral Fellow at Stony Brook University. He received his PhD
in 2006 from the University of Capetown. He has worked in many parts of the
Turkana Basin. His main research interests are in the analysis of Pliocene and
Pleistocene micromammals from Africa and their implications for reconstructing
paleoenviroments during the course of hominid evolution.

Mark Maslin is Professor at
Environmental Change Research Centre, Department of Geography, University
College London. Maslin is a leading palaeoclimatologist with particular
expertise in past global and regional climatic change. His research interests
include: the causes of past and future global climate change, ocean circulation,
ice ages, gas hydrates, Amazonia, East Africa and human evolution. Of particular
interest is the inter-action of local tectonics, orbital forcing and global
climate transitions on the environment of East Africa and the evolution of early
humans.

Marta Mirazón Lahr is Director of
the Duckworth Laboratory and a Fellow of Clare College at Cambridge University.
Her research covers two very different areas of biological anthropology —
palaeoanthropology and human evolutionary ecology. Recent research concerns
morphological and phylogenetic aspects of modern human diversity, based on
analysis of recent and fossil skeletal material. She is also examining problems
of human growth, nutrition, and development from an evolutionary perspective.

Kaye E. Reed is Associate
Professor and Associate Director of the School of Human Evolution and Social
Change at Arizona State University. Her main research interest is in the
ecological context of primate and hominin evolution through identification and
analyses of mammalian fauna and communities from Plio-Pleistocene hominin
localities. Current field research is focused on hominin sites in the Afar
Region of Ethiopia, and cave localities in Spain and Morocco.

G. Philip Rightmire is
Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at SUNY-Binghamton and an Associate of
the Department of Anthropology at Harvard University. His research focuses on
the evolution of the genus Homo, in particular the origin and dispersal
of Homo erectus at the beginning of the Pleistocene and the ways in which this
species was able to adapt to challenges posed by novel environments.

Hélène Roche is Directeur
de recherche at the French CNRS and is responsible for the Mission
Préhistorique Française au Kenya. She is co-P.I. for the West Turkana
Archaeological Project (WTAP). Her field work is located in East Africa and her
research activities are focused on Early Paleolithic and on the evolution of
lithic technology, from its Pliocene beginning until the end of the Acheulean.
In West Turkana these technical activities are put back in a well-defined
chronological and paleoenvironmental frame, in order to evaluate the impact of
global and regional climatic changes on biological and cultural
evolution.

John Shea is Associate Professor
of Anthropology at Stony Brook University. His research interests include
paleolithic archaeology and paleoanthropology of the Near East, Africa, and
Europe; early hominin adaptive radiations; origin of modern humans; Neandertals;
lithic technology; and experimental archaeology. He has a
specific interest in stone tools and other primitive tools, and he teaches a
course in Primitive Technology which examines the technological adaptations of
hunter-gatherer societies and their consequences for biological and behavioral
evolution.

Matt Sponheimer‘s research focuses
on investigating the ecology of early hominins in Africa using biogeochemical
methodologies. He is currently co-director of a multi-disciplinary project
investigating the community paleoecology of Australopithecus africanus at Makapansgat Limeworks, South Africa, and co-director of a research group
examining the neoecology of large mammals in South Africa’s Kruger National
Park. His other projects include using heavy isotopes to investigate early
hominin land use at Olduvai Gorge and the Sterkfontein Valley.

Randall Susman is Professor of
Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University. His research interests are in
paleoanthropology of the earliest hominins and inferring behavioral pathways
through studies of Australopithecus and early Homo, comparative
and functional morphology, and the behavioral ecology of hominids from East and
South Africa.

Phillip Tobias is Professor Emeritus of
Anatomy and Human Biology at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
His researches have covered several fields, including genetics, physical
anthropology, and the growth and ecology of living peoples of southern Africa.
He is best known for his comprehensive researches on early hominids, especially
of South and East Africa. He made the first monographic study of any of Africa’s
australopithecines. His PhD students came to him from many parts of the
world.

Peter Ungar is Professor of
Anthropology at the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on
reconstructing the feeding ecology of early hominins and other fossil primates.
Of particular interest is the use of new technologies to understand
relationships between diet in living primates, and their dental functional
morphology and microwear.

Bernard Wood is the Henry R. Luce
Professor of Human Origins and Adjunct Senior Scientist at the National Museum
of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution. His research focuses on hominin
dental morphology, on the development of quantitative methods for the
recognition of taxa in the fossil record and for phylogeny reconstruction, and
on ways to improve access to primary data about fossil hominins and closely
related extant higher primates. He is also interested in the public
dissemination of knowledge about human origins.